Assassin's Creed Valhalla might take time to sail into your library
Trouble in Valhalla
For Assassin's Creed Valhalla's Eivor, there's no foe that can't be bested with a good axe. Unfortunately, you're not Eivor. You're sitting at a PC, controlling them through a piece of software that has some troublesome villains of its own - from irritating freezes to the game stubbornly refusing to show up in your collection. Yes, it might be cold up in Norway, but these freeze-ups aren't the kind of immersion you're looking for, are they?
As far as big Ubisoft releases go, we're hardly looking at another Assassin's Creed Unity. Still, there are a few pesky issues you should watch out for before you set off on your high-performance longboat.
Before we even get into the game itself, though, it looks like a fair few folks have been having trouble getting into Valhalla's world in the first place. Folks across the forums and Reddit are reporting that, in some cases, Valhalla isn't appearing in their libraries after purchase. This, at least, Ubisoft have responded to, noting that "it may take up to 24 hours for your content or game to appear on your account" in a Tweet last night.
In fact, it looks like Ubisoft's back-end is having a bit of a moment right now. Achievements seem to be refusing to unlock for some folks, seemingly as part of a more wide-spread issue with the transition to Ubisoft Connect.
Once in-game, however, many folks are finding themselves stuck with sporadic crashes and freezes. Trawling the game's PC forums, the Unwelcome quest seems to be a particularly guilty culprit in locking Eivor in place - with one strange instance being resolved by changing the game's settings to high. Others are finding the game freezes every 10 minutes or so, and neither restarting the game, reverting drivers nor putting on a warm sweater is resolving the issue.
There are smaller issues too, including this underground strobe-light show in Valhalla's interiors. As far as I can tell, though, nobody's faces are missing completely - and while Ubisoft Support hasn't responded to these freezes yet, it's likely they'll be patched up in an update sometime soon. I'd hope, at least.
These problems shouldn't get in the way of Valhalla's grand old Norse romp, mind. At least, that's how Alice B found it in her Assassin's Creed Valhalla review, calling its England-plundering adventure a perfectly solid entry for fans of the series. "It might not set the world on fire," she reckoned, "but you can set some virtual bits on fire yourself if you want."
A solid alternative to arson, then, assuming you can avoid the cold.